The Biodiversity Financing Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean
Oct 2026
Author(s): Watson, Gregory;Penagos Concha, Ángela María;Vargas Sanchez, Carlos Eduardo;Murguia, Juan M.;Granados Gutierrez, Santiago;Vargas Noriega, Naja;Tambutti, Marcia;Badinella, Isabella;Benavides, Juan;Vergara, Daniel;Becerra, María Teresa;Arriaga Cinta, Frida Beatriz;Bucaram, Santiago;Llaguno, Duval
Closing the biodiversity finance gap is essential for Latin America and the Caribbean to advance toward sustainable, resilient, and inclusive development models. This requires mobilizing and…
CIMA Education Profile: Suriname
Oct 2026
Author(s): Biehl, María Loreto;Tolis, Marisol
Suriname has made important progress in expanding access to education, achieving near-universal primary enrollment, with more than 90% of children attending primary school (Arias Ortiz et al., 2024…
Mainstreaming Natural Capital Assessment for Wetland Conservation in Uruguay, Case Study
Oct 2026
Author(s): Sena, Guillermo;Dimitriadis, Caterina;Ortiz, Esteban;Camacho, Soledad;Ramsay, Tom;Silver, Jessica;Angarita, Héctor;Wolny, Stacie;Olivera, María Luisa;Llaguno, Duval;Callau, Vanessa
This project aimed to increase Uruguay's capacity to implement natural capital assessment and valuation approaches and apply them in the selection and design of policy and finance instruments.…
Implementing the Guide on Nature Results Metrics Across Real Operations: Selected Case Studies from participating Multilateral Development Banks 
Oct 2026
Author(s): Watson, Gregory
This companion document to the MDB High-Level Report, Investing in Nature: Status Update on Operationalizing the Common Principles, Taxonomy, and Guide on Results Metrics for Nature, presents…
Opportunities, Challenges and the Road to Scale. MDB Policy Brief on Nature Credits
Oct 2026
Author(s): Williams, Guy;Watson, Gregory
This policy brief provides practical guidance for governments, multilateral development banks (MDBs), and national development banks (NDBs) on how nature credits can support the mobilization of…
Unpaid Caregiving in Latin America and the Caribbean: Key Numbers and Trends
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Aranco, Natalia;Stampini, Marco;Ibarrarán, Pablo;Rivas Herrera, Carolina
We estimate and analyze unpaid care for children, persons with disabilities, and older people in Latin America and the Caribbean using information from ten time-use surveys and imputation and…
How Shocks Travel: The Cross-Border Impact of Natural Disasters in Firm Networks
Oct 2026
Author(s): Alviarez, Vanessa;Cevallos Fujiy, Brian;Espinoza Escobar, Angel De Jesus;Święcki, Tomasz
Do the boundaries of the multinational firm shape how shocks propagate through global production networks? We link U.S. Bill of Lading microdata, geocoded natural disaster records, and cross-border…
Designed to Succeed, Designed to Fail: Determinants and Reform Options for Local Public Investment Execution in Peru
Oct 2026
Author(s): Moreno, Kenji;Beverinotti, Javier
Peruvian local governments manage close to 40% of national public investment, yet they execute on average only 60% of their budget. This study examines the causes of low execution at the project…
Skill Certifications and Migrant Labor Market Integration: Experimental Evidence from Colombia
Oct 2026
Author(s): Busso, Matías;González-Velosa, Carolina;Muñoz-Morales, Juan S.;Ruiz, Juanita;Valencia Romero, Juan Diego;van der Werf, Cynthia
This paper studies whether government-issued skill certification improves labor market integration when workers skills are hard to verify. We evaluate a randomized offer of access to an occupation-…
Long-Term Care Benefits and Functional Deterioration in Older Adults: Evidence from the Catalan/Spanish SAAD Registry (2015-2024)
Oct 2026
Author(s): Hernández-Pizarro, Helena;Maynou, Laia;Prades-Colomé, Albert
Population ageing is raising the demand for long-term care (LTC), leading many countries to develop publicly funded LTC systems. However, little is known about whether the benefits these systems…
The Delta of Sustainable, Inclusive and Resilient Infrastructure Investment: Evidence from Cost-Benefit Appraisal
Oct 2026
Author(s): Angel Quintana, Daniel Mateo;Suárez-Alemán, Ancor
This paper examines whether infrastructure projects that incorporate sustainability, inclusion, and resilience (SIR) components differ from traditional investments in economic appraisal outcomes.…
Making Labor Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Workers' Welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): González-Velosa, Carolina;Kaplan, David S.;Minaya, Auri Melissa;Silva Porto, María Teresa
Making labor markets work, for both productivity and worker welfare, is among the most important and most neglected levers available to Latin America and the Caribbean. The region's labor market…
Not All Dollars Are Equal: The Composition of School Spending and Student Outcomes
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Elacqua, Gregory;Munevar, Isabela;Prada, María Fernanda;Rodríguez, Julio
This paper analyzes the association between the composition of school spending and various measures of school effectiveness. Using audited financial accounts for the universe of publicly funded urban…
Consumers' Attention to Monetary Policy: The Importance of Having “Skin in the Game"
Oct 2026
Author(s): Hajdini, Ina;Knotek II, Edward S.;Mitchell, James;Pedemonte, Mathieu;Shiroff, Taylor
Using a five-year survey of over 170,000 US consumers, we provide a novel direct measure of attention to monetary policy and show that the data strongly support the predictions of a rational…
Scaling Up Counseling with AI: Evidence from a Nationwide Experiment
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Ajzenman, Nicolás;Del Toro Mijares, Ana Teresa;Elacqua, Gregory;Hermosilla, Catalina;Veleda, Santiago Nicolas
A central obstacle to scaling many interventions is implementer quality: as a program expands and the pool of implementers broadens, average quality falls. Conversation-based interventions (…
The Intergenerational Cost of Parental Illness: Childrens' School Engagement in Chile
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Brito Rebolledo, Emilia Javiera;Contreras, Dante;Libuy, Nicolás
Severe health events are among the most common shocks households face, and in low- and middle-income countries their consequences are absorbed largely within the family. We study how a parents severe…
Can a Short Course on Behavioral Economics Improve How Public Servants Make Decisions?
Oct 2026
Author(s): Márquez, Karina;Scartascini, Carlos
Over the past few decades, behavioral economics has shown that people systematically deviate from the rational agent model, and the field has focused on correcting the biases underlying the decisions…
Asymmetric Labor Market Responses to External Demand Fluctuations: Evidence from Latin America
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Abril Arteaga, Andres Sebastian;Padilla, León
This paper examines how external demand fluctuations transmit asymmetrically to labor market outcomes in Latin America a region where structural informality and institutional rigidity shape the…
CIMA Education Profile: Jamaica
Oct 2026
Author(s): Arias Ortiz, Elena
Jamaica's education system faces a structural paradox: relatively high fiscal effort that has not translated into learning outcomes, while many students leave before reaching tertiary education…
Investor Perceptions of Barriers to Renewable Energy Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean
Oct 2026 Generative AI enabled
Author(s): Cavallo, Eduardo A.;Galindo, Arturo;Querubín, Cristina;Rojas-Suárez, Liliana
Closing Latin America and the Caribbean's infrastructure gap will require a sustained increase in private investment, particularly in the energy sector. Despite the regions strong renewable…